


Sharp Teeth

by theshyauthor



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2009, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Biting, Fluff, Gen, Halloween, London, M/M, Manchester, Mentions of Blood, Some angst, Vampire!Phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:25:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5095670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshyauthor/pseuds/theshyauthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AmazingPhil is a Youtuber and a vampire and according to Dan Howell, he is the nicest person to exist. From their first meeting in 2009 all the way to that one incident in the elevator at the BBC, this is their story.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharp Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! I’m so excited to share this with you guys, as I’ve been working on it for two months. The story was inspired by a gifset I stumbled across in August made by detectivejakep on tumblr. I saw it and thought ‘Shit, I’d love to read a fic about this’ but couldn’t find one, so then I thought ‘Shit, I need to write a fic about this’. It was so much fun to write and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)

The landscape blurred together before Dan’s eyes as he passed through. Trees, bushes, occasional houses and the streets all became one. He was on a train and his stomach was fluttering with nerves for two reasons. First, he was to meet his friend Phil for the first time in person. They had met over the internet, Dan originally starting out as a fan of the older man, and now he was to finally meet him. It was kind of hard for Dan to wrap his head around the fact that he’d now see Phil in person instead over just pixels on the screen and he honestly didn’t believe it was happening until he’d see Phil before him in the flesh. And second, he had never met a vampire before, or at least he hadn’t realized it if he had.

Vampires were an accepted part of society. They had fought for their rights for centuries, claiming that they never meant to hurt people on purpose and that they simply couldn’t change the curse that was embedded in their DNA. They were born the way they were, surviving on blood since day one. Any woman could give birth to a vampire baby due to the switch of DNA that scientists up to this day cannot explain, but a vampire won’t ever be able to give birth to a human baby ever again. Nowadays, their existence was no secret but they still liked to go by unnoticed, because even though they had proven that ninety-nine percent of their species (because there was always the one that wouldn’t follow the rules) was harmless, more than enough humans still didn’t trust them. They feared that a vampire could hurt them, that eventually they would try to gain power and enslave humanity. It was a ridiculous idea, because there was only one vampire to every few thousand people on earth, but the fear still lived within them. So vampires tried to cover their identity in public. They used contact lenses to change the colour of their eyes from the red of blood to the one of a human and hid their sharp canine teeth. 

AmazingPhil was a popular Youtuber and one of the few vampires in the United Kingdom that did not bother hiding who they truly were. Dan stumbled upon him on Youtube one night when he had to write an essay on the history of vampire rights for his History class, and watched all the videos uploaded to the man’s channel in one sitting. He was fascinated by the man and fascinated by his videos that ranged from random talking to the camera over lip-syncing to his favourite songs all the way to educating people on what the life of a vampire was really like. He didn’t wear contact lenses in his videos and the colour of his eyes was mesmerizing. He was twenty-two years old-never aging was a huge misconception of society, since they were born like every other human- and had a bubbly and open personality, one that was so different to the dark and vengeful vampires Dan saw in movies. 

It hadn’t taken long for Dan to become a fan of Phil and follow (stalk) him on social media platforms, and soon enough Phil had noticed him back and it was the start of a friendship. They had phone calls and Skype chats at 3 a.m. in the morning, and Phil was the first person Dan texted whenever he had something to share with someone, whether a deep thought or a stupid pun. And now, after a few months, Dan sat on a train and was finally able to meet Phil. He would stay at the man’s house for the weekend, since Phil’s parents- both humans- were gone, and he was really nervous. Meeting Phil was a dream come true, to finally be able to hug his friend and see that he was real, not just blurry pixels on a computer screen but made out of flesh and blood. But also the thought of spending time alone with a vampire made his nerves race. 

The vampire diet was a taboo topic in public. Hospitals provided them with blood bags, but Dan had heard more than once that those could not hold up with actual warm blood coming right from the human vein. Vampires were at their strongest when they had their teeth buried in human flesh and sadly from time to time vampire murders would shake up the country, because some just couldn’t resist. He didn’t know about Phil’s thoughts on blood bags and drinking from humans, that was the one topic the vampire refused to talk about and Dan wondered if Phil expected to be allowed to drink from him. He wasn’t sure what his answer would be if the question ever came up. Hungry vampires were said to not know when to stop and kill without wanting to, and humans were at their most vulnerable state. Dan trusted Phil with his life, even if he’d never met the man in real life before, but trusting someone with their life and letting them suck out your life were two completely different things. No, Dan was definitely not comfortable with the idea of sharp teeth piercing through his skin.

Minutes on the train felt like hours. When he finally got off the train in Manchester though, all fears in the wagon were abandoned and replaced by fears of what if Phil doesn’t show up? What if he decided that he doesn’t want to meet me anymore? Dan felt helpless in the crowd of people around him, not knowing which way to go or where to even look. He stopped in his steps and someone walked into him from behind, making him stumble. Instead of apologizing, that person cursed at him before moving on. Phil, he had to call him. Otherwise he would never find the young vampire, being swallowed up in a mass of bodies and unfamiliar faces like he was at the moment. He hadn’t even had a chance to grab his phone that was in his back pocket, when two strong arms wrapped around him. With an embarrassingly high squeak, Dan let go of the bag in his right hand, ready to defend himself, when he realized that the arms around him meant no harm.

“I thought you’d never arrive.”

Phil smelled like apples and cinnamon, warm and welcoming and immediately Dan felt like home. After the initial shock he was quick to also snake his arms around the body currently holding him close. Phil’s black hair tickled his left cheek, but he didn’t care. Instead he closed his eyes and forgot about the world around him. Phil was here, Phil was real and in his arms and Dan was happy. They stayed in this position for a while, neither of them willing to let go too soon.

“You scared me half to death.”

“But that’s not the only reason your heart is beating so fast, is it?” Phil teased when they finally let go. Dan noticed that Phil had contact lenses in, his eyes shining cerulean blue, the colour of his choice. He felt his cheeks go red at Phil’s words. Of course Phil could feel his heartbeat against his chest, vampires could feel more than just the skin of a human, could feel the blood rushing under the surface, every muscle under skin. Phil most definitely was also able to hear Dan’s heartbeat and Dan didn’t know what was worse, his red-coloured cheeks or his traitorous heartbeat.

Phil laughed as Dan’s only answer was the blush spreading even further over his cheeks and neck, and he grabbed the abandoned bag from the floor without offering first. “We should go. I reckon we first bring your stuff to my house and after that I can show you around the city. Is that okay with you?”

Talking with Phil was easy, as easy as it had been during their midnight Skype conversations. Dan had been worried that once they were face to face, the vampire would deem him boring or they wouldn’t find a topic to talk about, but after the first few minutes of warming up to the familiar stranger next to him, not one second between them was filled with silence. Phil was flirty and always quick with a joke and he showed Dan around the city and even took him to his favourite restaurant for dinner. Vampires enjoyed eating food just as much as humans did, but the taste of it was all they got out of it. Their body wouldn’t function for long from just food without human blood, and they would fall ill and die. Dan fell in love with Phil’s favourite restaurant that night, small and cosy and intimate and serving the best burger he’d ever eaten in his entire life. Phil’s taste buds were definitely one hundred percent working the right way. 

They arrived back at Phil’s house after the sun had already set, but neither of them was tired. Dan had already showered and was dressed in comfortable pyjama pants and a grey shirt that was too big on him. He sat in front of Phil’s impressive DVD collection with the order to pick out a movie he wanted to watch, while Phil was in the bathroom.

“Dan?” the vampire’s voice echoed through the house.

“Yes, Phil?”

“Do you mind if I take out my contact lenses? They get kind of itchy after a certain amount of time.”

Dan froze at the words. He honestly hadn’t expected Phil to ask permission to take out the contact lenses. After spending hours with the man, he had almost forgotten that he was spending time with an actual vampire. The topic had never arisen during conversation and to Dan Phil seemed like a completely normal human being anyway.

“Go ahead, I don’t mind.” 

Dan could hear the bathroom door closing and soon after the sound of water. Suddenly the thoughts in his head seemed to explode. Phil had eaten with him at the restaurant, but that was food that would not tame his hunger. Did that mean that Phil hadn’t eaten today? Was the vampire hungry? Was Dan expected to offer him his neck for being allowed to stay at his house? He was so deep in thought, that he did not hear the footsteps.

“Did you pick a movie?”

The younger man flinched in surprise and reached for the first DVD case that touched his fingertips. 

“Yes, let’s watch that one.”

He turned around to face Phil, only to be met with a frown on the other man’s beautiful face.

“Are you alright? If my eyes bother you, I can put the contact lenses back in. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I want you to feel safe here.”

Dan’s heart seized at Phil’s kind words. He looked up from where he was sat to meet bright red eyes looking at him with concern. Phil with blue eyes had already been hard to look at because he was absolutely stunning, but Phil with red eyes had to be a sin. The colour was mesmerizing and Dan wished he could just stare into them for an hour or two, but that was no appropriate social etiquette. 

“I’m fine, really,” he tried to assure Phil as quickly as possible. He felt stupid for even thinking that Phil would pressure him into allowing him to drink his blood, but still Dan couldn’t completely shake off the nerves. Phil hadn’t eaten properly since they met around lunchtime at the station, and now it was close to midnight already. He must be starving. 

They ended up on the couch, the DVD already playing, both curled up in a blanket. Phil paid attention to the movie, but Dan couldn’t do the same. He wasn’t even sure what they were watching at the moment. 

“Dan, you do realize that I can hear your heartbeat, right? What’s wrong? Because right now, it is beating nervously fast.” Phil was watching him and Dan couldn’t bring himself to look away from the bright red eyes sparkling in the dimly-lit room, couldn’t stop thinking about the sharp canines hidden inside Phil’s mouth that could pretty much pierce through his skin without problem.

Phil shifted under the blanket he was buried in and came closer, resting one of his pale hands on Dan’s knee, covered by his pants and the blanket he was wrapped up in. Even through the additional layer of clothes between them, Dan could feel the coldness of Phil’s skin against his knee, raising goose-bumps there. He looked threatening to Dan, looming over him now with those red eyes, watching every single one of Dan’s moves attentively. Phil was the hunter and he was the prey and he knew that there was nothing he could do if the vampire decided to attack. 

The expression on his friend’s face shifted from alert to dejection. He pulled his hand away and leaned back, bringing space between the two bodies. “You’re scared of me.”

“I’m no-“

“Don’t lie to me, Dan. I can hear it in the way your heart speeds up when I lean in and the way you breathe. And I can see it in your eyes. What did I do to make you feel this way? I had the impression we were getting along quite well this afternoon.”

The broken look on his face, the way his shoulders dropped. Contriteness layered his words and Dan wanted to reach out and pull Phil into a hug. 

“It’s not you,” he tried to convince the vampire, but they both knew those words were lies. Of course it was Phil that scared Dan, the monster slumbering under his skin that parents told their kids nightmarish stories about to keep them away from the blood-sucking creatures in society. “I just don’t know your customs and I’m staying at your house as your guest and you haven’t eaten anything today, at least nothing that is nutritious to you, and I was wondering if I was to offer you my blood as a thank you for letting me stay with you, but that thought really scares me because you have sharp teeth and I imagine it quite hurts but honestly if you wanted to, I couldn’t stop you and I also don’t want to be rude by denying you my blood because you’re letting me stay under your roof and-“

“Dan. DAN.” Phil’s voice boomed through the living room, effectively stopping the rambling of the younger man. Phil’s hands reached out and searched for Dan’s, weaving their fingers together and grasping them tightly, cold skin against warm one. “You are such an idiot.”

Dan’s mouth fell open. He wanted to defend himself against those words, but he didn’t know what to say. Phil’s forehead rested against his own now and all he could see was the red of his irises and hear the deep rumbling sound of his chuckle, feel the breath against his skin.

“That is honestly what you were worrying about, that I wanted your blood in return for letting you stay here? I ate while you were in the shower to not gross you out, you nerd. If I had known that not knowing would freak you out that much, I’d have told you. I can’t believe you’d actually think I would ever eat from you. I could never do that to you, I could never hurt you, Dan.”

“Deep down I knew that, but- wait, you just drank blood and now you’re literally breathing into my face?” Dan grimaced. “That’s gross, Phil.”

The vampire laughed and pulled his face back, his fingers, however, he left intertwined with Dan’s. “I did brush my teeth after showering. A vampire’s teeth can get caries as well, and trust me, I enjoy going to the dentist just as much as any other human being does.”

___

His parents had been against it, but Dan was a grown-up now and they couldn’t tell him what to do anymore. That’s why Dan moved in with Phil during his first year of university in Manchester. His dorm room had been small and disgusting and Phil had complained about feeling lonely in his flat and one night while playing video games together, they had just decided to move in with each other.

Dan’s parents had voiced their concerns and his friends- even the ones who knew Phil- were worried about him, but Dan ignored them. Phil was his best friend and none of them knew him like Dan did or even made the effort to. 

Their apartment was located high up in a building, offering them a few over the city of Manchester. It was a nice place to spend time at and they enjoyed the opportunity of curling up every night and watching movies together or playing video games without the knowledge that Dan had to return to his dorm room of dread soon. With Phil by his side, someone who was successful at what he was doing online, Dan also started to take his career on Youtube more serious, produced more videos and didn’t have to worry about people overhearing him talking to himself alone in his room in the middle of the night. Living with Phil was perfect- except for the blood bags.

The blood took Dan a while to get used to. He would open the refrigerator door and see blood bags stacked inside and curl up his nose in disgust. When they had lunch or dinner together, Phil would eat food and the glass in front of him would be filled with blood that he would occasionally sip on. Blood in close proximity made Phil’s canines grow on their own accord and the first time Dan had seen them during dinner, he had completely freaked out. Also he could slightly smell the blood in the glass, which in the beginning made his food unappetizing, but he got used to it eventually. The only rule he had in their apartment was that Phil was not allowed to drink blood next to Dan before the boy had had his breakfast, because the sight and smell of it on an empty stomach made Dan feel really sick. 

What Dan could absolutely not get used to was how messy Phil was. Unless they ate together, Phil preferred to drink his blood straight out of the bag it came in and he had a tendency to just leave the empty bag wherever it was at the moment and not picking it up and throwing it away. There were empty blood bags on the coffee table. There were empty blood bags on the breakfast bar. There were empty blood bags on Dan’s bed when Phil had sat there and sipped on them while watching the younger man edit and not bothered to take them with him once he left the room. No matter where Dan looked, there were empty blood bags and that really annoyed him.

After moving in with Phil, Dan’s friend circle seemed to change. The people he used to hang out with when living at the university dorm rooms refused to visit him in his apartment. Sure he met them in coffee shops or at restaurants or went out with them to clubs, but they mostly seemed on edge around him and whenever he brought up Phil in a conversation, they tried to change the topic quickly. Before being friends with an actual vampire, Dan had never realized how much they were still feared by society and avoided by people. Asking him about it, Phil once said that it didn’t bother him that much, but Dan didn’t quite believe that. He still remembered the first night he had spent at Phil’s place and the look of disappointment the vampire had given him when he realized that Dan was scared of him.

But just because Dan didn’t have his university friends to spend time with anymore didn’t mean that there weren’t people in his life that he enjoyed meeting up with. Phil’s friends were a wild mixture of humans and vampires, many of them making Youtube videos just like he did and all of them genuinely nice people that Dan really liked to spend his time with. He enjoyed PJ’s puns about vampires that were infinitely better than Phil’s. Life in Manchester with Phil and his other friends was good and when he quit university and decided to put his all into his career into Youtube, he felt like he had definitely made the right choices.

Two months after Dan quit university, things ran smoothly. Phil had finally started cleaning up after himself after Dan had thrown an empty blood bag at his head that he had found in the washing machine and without the pressure of university on his shoulders, Dan felt happier than he had in a while. He was currently making food for himself and Phil, chicken with risotto, while Phil was sitting on the couch and working on the newest video idea he had. He constantly had to shove his glasses back up his nose, as they were always sliding down from the way he was bent over the papers laid out on the coffee table. Dan found it funny that Phil’s eyesight was that bad. He was a vampire after all, every wound he had healed within seconds to hours. The only things that could instantly kill him were natural death or a stake through the heart, although bullets that were well placed and not removed from his body within a reasonable amount of time could also cause death. And then of all things, Phil was basically blind without glasses or contact lenses. Dan loved to tease him about it, affectionately calling him mole whenever he squinted to see without lenses or glasses. 

Dan was cutting up onions for his risotto. His cooking skills were basic, but by now he knew how to make a good risotto. It always took a bigger amount of time to make this dish in particular, but Dan liked it enough to spend an hour and a half on cooking stupid rice instead of browsing through the internet every once in a while. 

The onions Dan had bought today were extremely harsh. He hadn’t even been ready with peeling them when the familiar burn of tears prickled behind his eyelids. When he had finally peeled one and cut it in half, he had to take a step back and blink a few times while rolling his eyes upwards to get rid of the burning sensation. His eyesight was blurry now- as blurry as Phil’s on a daily basis, ha- but he was hungry and wanted to get finished as soon as possible, so he took the knife and started cutting without really seeing.

Dan saw the blood before he felt the sting. It wasn’t a huge cut, but it was big enough to hurt and to bleed over the one half of the onion he was currently cutting and made it inedible.

“Shit,” he cursed and let the knife drop. He squeezed the finger with the cut on it and watched as more drops of blood poured out and fell on the cutting board. Then the situation hit him and he froze.

He had heard Phil scribbling and shifting papers around the entire time, but suddenly there was nothing but silence behind him, where the vampire had been brooding over his video ideas. 

Dan felt a rush of air and then Phil was beside him, canines out and glistening in the light of the room. He tried to stumble back, but Phil already had his wrist circled with his fingers and was pulling at it. Dan pressed his eyes together. He wasn’t mad at Phil for what was about to happen. Blood was Phil’s drug and it was his own fault for being careless and cutting himself in front of a vampire. Phil had no fault in this situation and after it had happened, they would move on and act like nothing had happened at all.

Dan was waiting for the feeling of lips around the wound or even teeth against his skin, but the cold water that suddenly ran over his hand took him by surprise and he flinched away and opened his eyes. “What?”

But Phil in his faster than human speed had already left the room but returned only seconds later with a first-aid box in his hands. There was a determined look on his face as he opened it up and where the hell had he even gotten that box from? Was it in their possession? Dan had never seen it before. 

Phil pulled a face after looking inside and then looked at Dan’s hand that the man had cradled against his chest now, still wet from the cold water and the sink was still running. “I think you’re supposed to keep it under the running water for more than a second,” Phil said and furrowed his brow, running his tongue over his upper-teeth, gracing his canines with that movement. He grabbed for Dan’s wrist again and held it under the water. The coldness didn’t come as a shock anymore and Dan let Phil do whatever the vampire did. 

Phil dried Dan’s hand off and got out a spray. “It says that this will disinfect the wound. I assume that it will hurt a bit.” Dan watched in fascination as Phil sprayed the disinfectant on the wound, before taking a pink plaster out of the first-aid box and wrapping it very carefully around Dan’s finger, covering up the cut but also making sure that it wasn’t too tight to cut off the blood circulation into Dan’s fingertip.

“Are you okay? Does it hurt much?”

Dan looked at Phil with his mouth agape, speechless. 

“Sorry for the teeth thing, but the smell of fresh blood makes them have their own free will. It’s kind of like getting a boner with your teeth. Is that too much information? It probably is.”

“You didn’t bite me.”

Phil looked perplexed. “Of course I didn’t bite you, why would I?”

“But- but fresh blood. How can you resist the smell of that? You said yourself that you have a far stronger reaction to it than to blood coming from bags. How?”

Phil rolled his eyes in the most affectionate way. “Dan, I smell fresh blood almost every single day when I go outside, when I pass a woman that has her period. I’m used to it by now.”

Dan scrunched his face up in disgust. “You can smell when a woman is bleeding? That’s disgusting.”

Phil shrugged his shoulders. “It does have a bit of a stench to it, you know, like fish that’s already been out for a day too long.”

“Phil!”

“Anyway, on a scale from one to ten, how impressed are you with my first-aid skills?”

Dan looked at his injured finger that he had honestly forgotten about. The pain was dull and the pink plaster wrapped around it looked ridiculous. “I’d give it a seven, but the colour of the plaster raises it up to a nine. Where did you get that from anyway and since when do we even own a first-aid kit?”  
___

Phil was by far the nicest person Dan had ever met, but sadly other people sometimes didn’t react too kindly to him. With their growing success on Youtube, strangers recognized them more often on the streets and although they got many positive reactions, some of the ones Phil got were not that favourable.

They had been in a shopping mall on a rainy Friday afternoon and a thirteen year old girl came up to them to talk to them and ask for a picture. Her mother had stayed in the background and watched the two males interact with her daughter with distrust, when realization dawned on her of who the familiar-looking black-haired man was and she had pulled her daughter away by her wrist before she could manage to get a picture with them.

Sometimes parents would shield their young children with their own body when recognizing Phil out in public, and watch him pass by with wary eyes.

It hurt Dan to see these situations because he knew how much Phil was affected by them. The usually energized man would become quiet, his shoulders would be drawn up to his ears and his head bowed down to make sure that his black fringe would act as a curtain concealing his face.

Whenever this happened Dan would bump Phil’s shoulder. “You know you have more humanity in you then those people, right?” he would remind his friend and throw an arm around him, glaring daggers at any passers-by that dared to even glance at his best friend. “People are judgmental assholes, but don’t worry about it. When you guys finally dominate the world, just make sure to suck those with prejudice dry first.” The words were always spoken loud enough by Dan to make sure that others heard them and he basked in the horrified looks he would get. But the most he always enjoyed Phil’s little giggle at the horrible innuendo he made.  
___

London was loud and busy and Dan and Phil both loved it. It had opened up many new opportunities for them, like seeing their Youtube friends more often or working for the BBC regularly. They had rented a nice apartment that had turned into home within a few weeks and if asked with the question if they’d ever want to move away again, they would probably answer with a no. 

It was a Monday night and they had just finished up their monthly radio show. They currently stood in front of the elevator doors, waiting for one of the three elevators to arrive and bring them to the ground floor. Dan was patiently standing there but Phil on the other hand was less patient. He always shifted his weight from one foot to the other and his eyes flitted over the displays of the elevators showing which floor they were in. During the entire show he had been a bit off already. Dan didn’t think that the listeners or viewers had noticed, but after years of knowing Phil he could easily detect the smallest changes in his friend’s mood.

“What’s wrong with you?” Dan asked after having finished typing a message on his phone as he slid it into the back pocket of his jeans. 

“I’m really hungry.”

“I told you to eat something before we left for the studio, why didn’t you do that?”

Phil rolled his eyes and wrapped his pale arms around his stomach, which already made some desperate gurgling noises. “You know I hate eating before the show. When I’m sated I become all tired and slow and that’s not what I need when live on the radio.”

“And that’s why we have this discussion basically every month.”

The door of the elevator to the right opened with a ding and one person exited it with a quick hello directed in their direction, descending into the long corridors of the BBC quickly afterwards. Dan pressed the button for the ground floor after entering and the doors closed fast and he got that funny feeling in his stomach whenever a descent was a bit too fast.

And then the elevator stopped.

“What the heck?” Dan asked as the lights went off and the emergency lights turned on. “Are you serious right now?”

He looked over to Phil, who looked even paler in the light than normally and who had a frown on his face. “I’m going to be honest with you, I really don’t like this. Press the emergency button?”

Dan did as told and followed the instructions on the panel. Luckily he got connected to a person on the other end of the line after a few seconds only. After he was finished explaining what had happened and left with the promise that help would be on its way soon, he turned around with wriggling eyebrows. “Lucky that we don’t have to pee right now, huh? That would have be- Phil, are you alright?”

His friend was not standing anymore but sitting on the floor now, his back resting against the metal wall, knees tucked close to his body and forehead lying on them. He had his arms wrapped around his legs. 

Dan didn’t hesitate to drop to the floor next to his friend, a hand already reaching out to lay on the vampire’s forearm. “What’s wrong?”

“Don’t touch me!” The words sounded harsh and Dan jerked his hand back, not used to hearing Phil talk to him with such force. And then it came to him. Phil hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast as he had felt really sick around lunchtime.

“Shit.”

Under further examination, it wasn’t just the emergency light that made him look paler than usual, it was the fact that no fresh blood was running through his veins. Fine tremors were shaking his body and Dan was sure that if he could see Phil’s mouth right now, he’d be met with sharp teeth poking over his lips threateningly. “You’re really hungry, aren’t you?”

“Can you just shut up and please go to the other side of the elevator until we’re out of here? Your blood and the sound of your heart is really distracting me right now when all I need to do is focus.”

When Phil looked up, Dan could see thin black lines under his eyes, highlighting the seriousness of this situation. His best friend had never talked to him about it before, but Dan had learned at school that if vampires don’t eat for a certain amount of time, they get too hungry and their primal instincts come into the foreground, making them the vicious hunters feared by society with no concept of how much blood is too much, making it easy for them to kill people without intending to. What that basically meant was that when vampires were hungry, they turned into the killing monsters that society sadly still made them out to be all the time.

Dan was stuck in the elevator with his best friend, a blood-hungry vampire that could attack any second because of all the right circumstances playing together this day. They were truly fucked.

Phil’s sharp canines were already prominent and even with blue contact lenses the intensity of the red in his irises was already shining through.

And then Dan remembered what happened to vampires that would hold back the urge for blood for too long. It was like water for the human body and within a not all too long amount of time- because unless humans that could go without water for few days, vampires could only go without blood for few hours due to it keeping their entire body functioning- their body would start to get affected by it, causing severe health problems that could lead up to the hospital or even death. Looking at him intently, Phil already looked close to the stage of needing a hospital by the way his skin was snow-white and every fibre of his body shaking.

“Drink from me, Phil.”

“Absolutely not.” The words came out from behind pressed together lips and even in his weak state, Phil managed to give Dan the most judgmental look he could.

“Look, I don’t want you to actually attack me and I don’t want you to go to the hospital and we’re stuck here with no other options, so this is the only solution I can see. Just throw your fangs in real quick, take a few sips to get you through.”

“I won’t do that, Dan.”

Dan threw his hands up in annoyance. The seriousness of this situation made him panicky. “Why the fuck not? Is my blood not good enough for you?”

The way Phil looked at him made him quiet. There was pain in his eyes that reminded him of his first day in Manchester, when he had been scared that Phil would want him as his evening meal. “I could never do that to you, you know I could never hurt you, Dan.”

“I offered, Phil. You would hurt me more by not accepting that offer and ending up in the hospital- or god forbid- a coffin. I trust you.” 

Dan started rolling up his right sleeve with shaking fingers until half of his forearm was visible and presented the patch of skin under which his blood was thrumming to Phil. “Take a bite, please- just enough to keep you sane until we’re out of here and home.”

Phil’s eyes were transfixed on the wrist offered to him right in front of his mouth. He hadn’t often drunk from humans before and the sweet smell of fresh warm blood tickling his nostrils made his mouth water. Dan looked at him with trust and worry and Phil could also see nerves in his eyes, which was understandable. He wrapped his pale fingers of one hand around Dan’s wrist joint and with the other hand he held Dan’s elbow. “I promise I’ll be gentle.” 

Dan squeezed his eyes shut as he felt the tips of Phil’s canines press against his wrist and pierce through his skin. It hurt less than he had expected, but the feeling was still weird. He had thought that it would feel like a needle in his arm taking blood from his veins, but it didn’t. He could really feel the way Phil sucked the blood, how it was taken out of his body as if the stream of it was changing from running through his veins to flowing towards the teeth stuck inside his skin.

A look over to Phil showed that his best friend’s eyes were closed and the thin black lines under his eyes visibly disappeared, making Dan sigh out with relief. Phil would be okay now, and if he could stop draining the blood out of Dan’s body anytime soon, then they’d both be alright. 

But time passed and Phil didn’t stop and Dan started feeling weak. His vision started to become unfocused and the teeth in his arm now hurt as if knifes were stabbed through his skin and he tried to pull back, but Phil still had his grip on his arm and elbow and why did everything suddenly hurt this bad?

The pain stopped but Dan was disoriented. Suddenly nothing made sense anymore around him, the walls were too close and he was tired. Very tired.

“Dan?”

He could hear someone calling his name but his eyelids were heavy and the position he was in- kneeling on the dirty elevator floor- was suddenly so hard to hold and without even wanting to, he felt his body fall to the side with fast speed and braced himself for the pain in his head to come when his skull knocked against the floor. 

It never came.

Instead there was a cold hand under his face, keeping him upright, cradling him like a baby, and he blinked and looked up at Phil, whose red eyes stopped glowing through the blue of his contact lenses and whose face was etched with worry and concern. 

“Shit Dan, I’m so sorry. Fuck, are you alright? Oh god, say something please. I’m sorry.”

Dan tried to answer to the words that came at him too fast to be processed while Phil repositioned him, his head now resting on his best friend’s lap and long pale fingers caressed his forehead and played with his fringe. Slowly the world stopped spinning but Phil’s words of apology didn’t stop coming. 

“Wh-what just happened?” Dan’s words sounded slurred, as if he’d had too much alcohol to drink. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. 

“It’s your body’s natural reaction against the bite of a vampire drinking too much, shutting down. It makes your blood turn bitter and taste undesirable. Shit Dan, I’m so sorry I drank so much, I honestly didn’t mean to.”

There was still a throbbing in Dan’s wrist, but it didn’t hurt anymore. Phil seemed to be okay. He looked like his pale self again, no black lines under his eyes, no sharp teeth hidden behind his lips, and even no blood around his mouth unlike sometimes after he ate, when he looked like a four year old that had eaten Spaghetti Bolognese. 

“Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m fine, but we should get you checked out by a doctor or something.”

Dan shook his head lazily. “No, just give me a day or two to recover.” Then he frowned. “Do you think they’ve forgotten us in here?”

It took fifteen more minutes before help was on its way and they were freed from the elevator and given suspicious looks as Dan desperately tried to hide his wrists behind long sleeves and fought off all approaches of a medical check-out.

“I’m alright, seriously. I was stuck in an elevator, not attacked by a vampire. Leave me alone.”

They took a taxi home and Phil ordered Dan into bed immediately to rest. Dan didn’t fight him on his orders. He was tired and cold and sleep sounded like a good idea. Phil left something to drink and some iron pills on Dan’s nightstand and as he was about to leave, thinking that Dan was already asleep, Dan’s hand found his wrist and held him in place.

“Phil, I have a question.”

“Hm?” Phil carded his hand through Dan’s mussed up brown hair that was the only thing poking out from under the blanket that was pulled up to Dan’s nose. 

“Why are movies and books portraying vampire bites as something erotic that turns people on, when in reality it just hurts and your body shuts down?”

Phil started laughing at the unexpected question and could feel his cheeks colouring red. “Because what you experienced was a hungry vampire. Biting can be an erotic thing that’s very much sexual, but not in an elevator while I’m starving to death.” 

“Maybe every bite is supposed to be good and you’re just a bad lover, Phil.”

“I’m a very good lover, thank you very much, and once you’ve recovered you can gladly find that out for yourself.”

Dan grumbled and completely disappeared under the blankets and Phil left the room with a laugh. The next morning when Dan woke up, still feeling a bit dizzy, there was breakfast at bed waiting for him, Phil’s way of showing him that he still felt guilty for what transpired in the elevator. 

__

It was the night of Halloween 2015, and Dan looked at the clock on his phone impatiently. They were meant to leave for a Halloween party at a friend’s house ten minutes ago already, but Phil refused to leave his room, claiming that his costume wasn’t quite done. Dan honestly didn’t see what the problem was. He himself had decided to wear black clothes and smear some fake blood on his face, going as a not very convincing zombie version of himself. Phil however, seemed to have gone all out on it this year. He’d been keeping his costume a secret from everyone.

“Phil, hurry up,” Dan shouted from the staircase down to the end of the hallway. The fake blood on his face was itchy and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to distract himself and not start scratching. 

He was typing away on his mobile phone when the door to Phil’s bedroom finally opened and looked up. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Phil was standing there in his usual black skinny jeans and one of his more formal shirts, a black cloak tied around his neck, his eyes shining red and the fakest of sharp teeth poking out from his mouth with a trickle of fake blood running down the corner of his mouth.

“Fear the Philpire!”

Dan’s mouth was agape and he unwilling to believe his eyes. “You’re the worst vampire I have seen in my entire life, real and in costume.”

Phil rolled his eyes at the comment and with a dopey smile on his face rushed past Dan, wrestling into a warmer jacket to shield himself from the cold of the late October night. “I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to your boring human life.”

The younger man watched his friend rush by and shook his head in an affectionate way. He followed less quick and with a smile muttered to himself: “How did I ever think you were scary?”

**Author's Note:**

> If you read this, you've made it to the end. Congrats! I hope you liked this fic and if you want to read more of my stories, you can go to my profile here or go to my tumblr (theshyauthor), where I also post shorter works that aren't published here! :)


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